These £9 dice are made from wood that dates back to the Stone Age

Ever find yourself looking for a talking point around the table? How about dice made from wood older than civilisation itself?

That’s what creator Cillian McMinn is promising on Kickstarter with the Ancient Kauri dice, with the six-sided gaming accessories crafted from trees apparently carbon dated and proved to be 50,000 years old.

Ancient Kauri is said to be the world’s oldest wood, harvested from the Kauri forests of trees that were levelled by Stone Age tsunamis and buried for millennia in peat swamps. According to McMinn, the buried wood was preserved by the lack of air, meaning it can now be dug up and used.

The wood McMinn plans to use for the dice comes with a certificate of authenticity, proving that the material used outdates all known civilisation, the human inhabitation of Europe, religion and all spoken and written language. In short: that’s a pretty long time.

To put it in further context, the creation of dice is believed to have been around 5,000 years ago, making the wood used in these rolling cubes ten times older than the very concept of dice.

McMinn has stuck with the Stone Age theme for the design of the die faces, using an abstract series of straight lines to mimic the etchings of Neanderthals using rudimentary tools.

A single die is £9 (plus £3 UK postage) through the Kickstarter campaign, with a pair available for £15. They should be out to backers this September.

The campaign has already raised more than £8,800 on its initial £1,000 target and will end on August 22nd. Not bad going for a couple of small wooden cubes.